Ascend Money builds central app platform, delivers services faster

Ascend Money operates across Southeast Asia with headquarters in Thailand and offices in Vietnam, Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Its popular TrueMoney e-payment app lets users pay bills, transfer money, shop, and purchase mobile phone credits. The company wanted to improve collaboration and delivery times for new products and features while also providing customized services for each local population. Each day, Ascend Money builds and releases around 100 apps—and this number is growing. “We don’t want to have 6 teams developing the same thing 6 times, and we need to make changes quickly to satisfy customer demand,” said Tim Howard, former Head of Technology Delivery at Ascend Money.

To improve the efficiency of its application processes, Ascend Money decided to migrate its legacy applications to a standardized platform using Red Hat technology. With assistance from Red Hat Consulting, Ascend Money moved both its legacy applications and new cloud-native services to OpenShift Container Platform, providing a single platform for IT and developers to collaborate across cloud environments. Ascend Money also used automation to deploy applications across countries consistently and a management solution for increased visibility and easier scheduling. “Having access to the open source community, in addition to Red Hat support, helps us work in a way that would not be possible with proprietary solutions,” said Tim.

Software & services

• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
• Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform
• Red Hat Satellite
• Red Hat Consulting

With its centralized platform, Ascend Money is able to increase development efficiency with a self-service approach. “OpenShift has reduced the friction between teams and cut waiting times for resources,” said Joaquin Fernandez Llamas, Head of Platform Center of Excellence at Ascend Money. “It’s helped us transform the way we deliver software.” In addition, the company has improved time to market with automation and on-demand scalability. As a result, tasks that previously took 1 week can now be completed in just 2-3 days, and the company can now support nearly 200 developers with a technology operations team of only 6 people. The company also enhanced security and compliance with enterprise support and agile management capabilities. “Being a payment processor requires us to have a highly secure environment,” said Joaquin. “With Red Hat Satellite, we can take action to respond to threats or vulnerabilities immediately if required.”